This invention relates to error correction of data stored in binary digital form in memory devices. Such data upon recall from memory may not be the same as that stored in memory because of such things as random errors which will generally result in no more than one error in an eight bit binary byte, and burst errors which can result in multiple digital errors per byte.
The present error correcting technique involves the use of 100% memory redundancy plus a small amount of logic hardware to provide for automatic correction of the above types of errors so long as the number of such errors do not exceed certain limits. Programming techniques have been known through which such errors can be corrected with software, however the rapid decrease in the cost of memory capacity relative to labor intensive software makes the present error correction technique extremely cost effective.